As of January 21, the requirement for a negative COVID-19 test when entering Sweden will be lifted. The government decided this on Tuesday. 

“The workload will be significantly reduced for us,” says Mats Berggren, head of the Border Police in the South Region. 

On December 28, a requirement for a negative COVID-19 test before entering Sweden was introduced due to the increased spread of the infection. However, the Public Health Agency of Sweden now assesses that travelers do not pose a particular risk of affecting the spread of omicron in the country.

Therefore, the government is returning to the previous entry restrictions. 

– This is welcomed. The current requirement has meant a lot of administrative work for us, says Mats Berggren. 

As of January 21, people traveling to Sweden from countries within the EU/EEA must present the EU's digital Covid certificate or equivalent certificate showing that the traveler is vaccinated, has tested negative within 72 hours before arrival, or has recovered from Covid-19 within six months. 

More than 100 rejections per day

This week, the border police in the southern region have rejected an average of between 100 and 150 people per day. At the end of December, when the workload was at its highest, more than a thousand travelers were rejected per day.

The Border Police has been able to increase its strength by 30 percent by borrowing police officers from all over Skåne to handle the work in Helsingborg, Hyllie, Trelleborg, Ystad and Malmö.

– The queues were long. The checks had to be carried out, and the cases had to be recorded. This was far from our normal workload. Before Covid and the entry ban, we were staffed to handle just over a hundred rejections per week, says Mats Berggren.

Source: SVT.SE